Chapter 52: A Little
"Begin!" the overseer’s voice rang out.
Aidan’s opponent moved first.
He was an early-stage Epic-rank against an SSS-rank, and he wanted this over fast. A sphere of green wind gathered in his palm and screamed across the field, aimed straight at Aidan’s chest.
Aidan did not step aside.
He lifted one hand, and the air before him hummed. A thin, invisible sheet of force bent the wind ball sideways at the last breath. It curved past his shoulder and burst against the formation wall behind him.
The young man’s eyes went wide. "What..."
’Electromagnetism,’ Aidan thought calmly. ’Bend the charge in the air, bend the attack. Nothing flashy. Nothing anyone can name.’
[Tom: Boring. Just kill him already.]
[Arthur: Master is being shy, hehe.]
Aidan ignored the two and started walking forward.
Panicking now, the young man threw everything he had. Blade after blade of green wind carved through the air, filling the ring with howling edges.
Aidan slid between them.
His Speed, lifted by his Power Bonds, sat at a level no early-stage Epic-rank could touch. To the crowd, he simply blurred. To his opponent, he vanished and reappeared a step closer with every heartbeat.
"Stay back!" the young man shouted, backpedaling toward the edge of the ring.
He never made it.
Aidan was already inside his guard, close enough to see the sweat on his brow. He raised two fingers and touched them, almost gently, to the young man’s Spirit Armor.
Then he let a single thread of aspect.
Metal wound tight, lightning coiled through it, and the whole thing released in one short, contained pulse. No explosion. No wide flash. Just a hard, silent crack that traveled straight through the armor and nowhere else.
[Garen’s Spirit Armor: 100/100]
[Opponent’s Spirit Armor: 100 to 0]
The floating tally above the field blinked once and went to zero.
The young man staggered, unhurt but out, his Spirit Armor scattering into pale motes. He blinked down at himself, not quite believing it.
"Match over," the overseer announced. "Field One goes to Garen. Time elapsed, nine seconds."
Silence hung over the basin for a moment.
Aidan lowered his hand and stepped back across the formation line, plain-faced, as if he had done nothing worth remembering.
’Clean and quiet,’ he thought. ’Sharp enough to win. Small enough that no one calls it Legendary. Let them think it was good SSS work against a weak draw.’
That was exactly how the crowd read it.
"Bah, the kid froze," an Epic-rank Hunter muttered nearby. "Early-stage nerves. Anyone could have punished that."
"Fast little SSS, though," another admitted, shrugging. "Still, a weak opponent. Means nothing."
The two pupils of the Dragon Warlord barely turned their heads.
The tall woman with pale scales along her jaw watched the tally settle, then looked away with a small, bored curl of her lip. The broad man beside her did not even do that much.
To them, it was simple. A nervous boy had lost his nerve, and some no-name SSS had taken the free win. Nothing there was worth a second thought.
’Perfect,’ Aidan thought, and let the ember in his chest sit quietly. ’Keep looking through me. It makes the ending so much better.’
[Jovan: You held back so much it almost hurt to watch. That pulse could have gone through ten of him.]
’I know. That’s the point, senior.’
[Jovan: Mm. Restraint. A young me could have learned from you.]
[Tom: A young you would have blown up the whole basin and cried about it after.]
[Jovan: ...You are not wrong.]
Solenne was also watching all of this hidden inside Tom’s space-time pocket.
Aidan smiled to himself and rejoined the edge of the crowd.
On the second field, the other first-round fight was still raging, two Epic-rank Hunters trading fire and stone across the ring while the clock burned down. It was loud, showy, and slow.
Aidan watched it with mild interest.
’Different world entirely,’ he noted. ’They fight to look strong. I fight to end things.’
The overseer’s voice came again as the second match closed. "First round complete. Winners, prepare. The bracket advances."
New names bloomed in the air in both fields, pairings drawn fresh from the survivors.
Aidan’s gaze drifted to the two pupils, then to the red gate hanging at the far end of the basin, the Terrorized Dimension waiting behind it like a slow, patient wound.
’Win it. Farm it. Break through to Epic-rank.’ He breathed the plan in and out. ’Then try out the raid. No one has managed to finish it yet, not even the Devil Prince.’
’If I manage to clear it, it will prove my power to myself.’
Aidan wanted to get stronger than Transcendent Players, not the normal Hunters. The only way to measure his combat power was by competing against other Transcendent Players via raids.
His name appeared over Field One again, matched against a mid-stage Epic-rank this time. A real step up from the nervous boy. A veteran, by the scars on his arms and the steadiness in his stance.
Aidan rolled his shoulders once and started toward the ring.
The scarred veteran met his eyes across the formation line, and unlike the boy, he did not look down on the lone SSS at all. He had seen the nine-second finish.
"You’re not what your rank says you are," the veteran said quietly, settling into a low stance.
Aidan’s Spirit Armor wrapped around him, fresh at one hundred Hit Points.
"Maybe." Aidan smiled, that old ember glowing warm and steady beneath his calm.
"Begin!"
The veteran did not move.
He planted his feet and let the scarred skin of his arms and chest harden, taking on the dull grey sheen of stone shot through with veins of iron. Earthsteel. A body built to endure.
’A turtle,’ Aidan thought. ’He isn’t here to beat me. He’s here to outlast me.’
It made sense. In a one-minute match decided on Hit Points, a man who could barely be scratched only had to survive and chip once. Let the fast SSS wear himself out against a wall.
[Tom: Ugh. A patient one. I hate patient ones.]
[Arthur: Just melt him, Master.]
Aidan’s smile stayed thin. Melting him would work. It would also look like far too much.
He opened at speed, blurring in low, and drove a metal-edged strike into the veteran’s flank.
The blow rang off the earthsteel like a hammer off an anvil. The veteran barely rocked.
[Garen: 100/100]
[Korr: 98/100]
Two points. That was all it took off him.
Korr’s steady eyes tracked Aidan through the whole exchange, calm and unbothered. He had eaten harder hits from Terrors for decades. He could do this every minute.
Then he countered.
The ground under Aidan buckled. A spear of iron-veined stone erupted upward, fast and heavy, aimed with a veteran’s read of exactly where a dodging man would land.
Aidan was not where he expected.
A faint hum bent the air, and he slid a hand’s width to the left in the same instant, letting the stone spear tear past his ribs and stab empty sky.
[Jovan: Electromagnetism again. You cheat with charge the way I cheat with misfortune.]
’It’s not cheating like yours, man. But it does look like one.’ Aidan grinned.
Korr grunted, mildly impressed, and pressed forward. More spears rose. The ground itself became his weapon, walls and spikes surging up to box the fast little SSS in and slow him down.
Aidan wove through all of it.
His Speed sat at a level Korr simply could not answer. To the veteran, the SSS became a smear of motion, never quite where the stone reached, never once trapped.
But motion alone would not win this. Aidan could dance for a minute and still lose on Hit Points, because earthsteel shrugged off everything he tapped it with.
’Fine,’ he thought. ’You want me to actually break you. Then I’ll break you the quiet way.’
He stopped running.
He planted his feet just outside Korr’s reach and looked at the earthsteel, not as a wall, but as a structure. Plates of stone locked together at the joints. Veins of iron threading through all of it like wire through cloth.
’There,’ Aidan thought. ’The seams. And the iron.’
[Tom: Oh, he’s got that look. Watch this one.]
Aidan raised one hand, palm open, and reached out with electromagnetism.
Every iron vein inside the earthsteel answered him at once. He did not smash the armor. He gripped it, took hold of all that metal woven through Korr’s body, and locked it stiff.
Korr felt his own defense seize up. The stone that had flowed like water a breath ago went rigid, refusing to shift where he willed it.
"What are you..." the veteran was startled. He tried to keep his control over the armor, but he was overpowered by the sheer influx of electromagnetism.
Aidan closed his fingers.
Metal followed the electromagnetism, prying the locked seams a hair apart, opening a hundred hairline gaps where the plates met. Into every one of those gaps, he threaded a single point of burst.
Then he let it all go at once.
The earthsteel did not shatter outward. It cracked inward, every seam popping in the same instant, a soundless lattice of fractures racing across Korr’s whole body.
His Spirit Armor took all of it.
[Korr: 98 to 0]
The tally blinked and fell to zero.
Korr staggered as his hardened shell crumbled back to plain scarred skin, his Spirit Armor scattering into pale motes. He stood there, whole and unhurt, staring at his own hands.
"Match over," the overseer announced. "Field One goes to Garen. Time elapsed, thirty-one seconds."
The basin was quieter this time.
The nine-second win could be waved off as a nervous boy freezing up. This was different. This was a mid-stage Epic-rank veteran, a wall of earthsteel, undone from the inside by a lone SSS.
A low murmur ran through the nearer Epic-rank Hunters.
"He didn’t break the armor. He broke the joints," one said slowly. "That’s not raw power. That’s reading a man apart."
"Still an SSS," another muttered, though with less scorn than before.
Aidan let the aspects settle quietly and stepped back over the line, plain-faced, as if he had done nothing worth the murmur.
’Precision, not power,’ he thought. ’Let them talk about my clever hands.’
Across the way, Korr huffed something that was almost a laugh and left the ring. "Good fight, haha."
The two pupils of the Dragon Warlord had watched this one.
The pale-scaled woman’s bored curl was gone. She looked at Aidan now with a small, thoughtful frown, the way a hunter eyes a track that does not match any beast she knows.
The broad man beside her said something low. She answered without turning her head, and her eyes never left Aidan.
’There it is,’ Aidan thought, that old ember glowing warm and pleased. ’Now you’re curious. Curiosity is so much more fun to disappoint.’
[Jovan: They finally see a little.]
’A little.’ Aidan’s eyes glinted. ’Never the whole thing. Not until it’s too late.’
